NICHOLAS
ROGERS

ABOUT
THE XV O'S, THE BRIGITTINES AND SYON ABBEY

Domine Jesu Christe
eterna dulcedo.

Jesus Christ! Eternal
sweetness to those who love Thee, joy surpassing all joy and
all desire, salvation and hope of all sinner; Thou Who hast
proved that Thou hast no greater desire than to be amongst
men even assuming human nature during the course of time for
love of men, recall all the sufferings that Thou has endured
from the first moment of Thy conception, and especially
during Thy passion, as it was decreed and ordained from all
eternity in the Divine plan.

Remember, O Lord, that
during the Last supper with Thy disciples, having washed their
feet, Thou gavest them Thy Precious Body and Blood, and while
at the same time Thou didst sweetly console them, Thou didst
foretell them Thy coming Passion.

Remember the sadness and
bitterness which Thou didst experience in thy soul as Thou
prayed: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'.

Remember all the fear,
anguish and pain that Thou didst suffer in Thy delicate Body
before the crucifixion, when, after having prayed three
separate times, bathed in a 'sweat of blood', Thou wast
betrayed by Judas, Thy disciple, arrested by the people of a
nation Thou hadst chosen and elevated, accused by false
witnesses, unjustly judged by three judges, all this in the
flower of Thy youth and during the solemn Pascal season.

Remember that Thou wast
despoiled of Thy garments and clothed with the garments of
derision, that Thy face and eyes were veiled, that Thou was
buffetted, crowned with thorns, a scepter placed in Thy hands,
that Thou was fastened to a column and crushed with blows and
overwhelmed with affronts and outrages.

In memory of all these
pains and sufferings which Thou didst endure before Thy
Passion on the Cross, grant that before I die, I may with true
contrition make a sincere and entire confession, make worthy
satisfaction and be granted the remission of all my sins.
Amen.

Pater noster, Ave Maria.

his is an adaptation of a
translation, published in Bruges in 1576 for the use of
English Catholics, of the first of the XV O's, a
series of fifteen meditations on the Passion, each beginning
with an O. These are commonly ascribed to St Birgitta of
Sweden, but they are not to be found in the corpus of her
writings compiled by Prior Peter Olafsson and Alfonso de
Vadaterra, and have been rejected as suppositions by Wilmart
and others.

Willmart, writing in 1935, noted the prevalance
of the XV O's in England. On the Continent their
appearance is occasional. I have encountered them in less than
half a dozen continental books of hours of the 15th and early
16th centuries. It was not until they were published in pamphlet
form in Rome about 1478 that they achieved some measure of
popularity, running to 21 Latin editions and five German ones
between then and 1500. By contrast, I have calculated that they
appear as an original part of the text in over 60% of books of
hours produced in England, or in the Low Countries for the
English market, in the 15th and early 16th centuries.

The earliest example of the devotion I have
discovered so far occurs in British Library Additional
Manuscript 16998, a missal illuminated by the famous London
illuminator, of Netherlandish extraction and training, Herman
Scheerre. On stylistic grounds it is to be dated circa
1405-10. Unfortunately nothing can be said for certain about the
patron, a layman, who is depicted in one of the miniatrues. The
XV O's are unattributed in this manuscript, but a link
with St Birgitta is established in Aberdeen University Library
Manuscript 25, a Sarum Book of Hours. This contains calendrical
tales fixing its date between 1406 and 1424, and costume and
other details suggest that it should be placed toward the end of
that period. For the time being, it is sufficient to note that
the XV O's , which are prefaced by a lengthy rubric, are
illustrated by an initial depicting St Birgitta seated reading
to two nuns. In most early instances of the XV O's the prefatory
rubric, if there is one, is brief and non-committal, usually
describing the devotion as 'a good and devout prayer to Our Lord
Jesus Christ'. Trinity College, Cambridge, Manuscript B.11.18,
of circa 1430, has a rubric referring to the number of
Christ's wounds 'according to Bernard'. I suspect a scribal
error has led to the substitution of his name for that of
Birgitta. The connection with the Mother of Vadstena is clearest
in York Chapter Library, Manuscript 16.G.5, dated to circa
1420 by Christopher Wordsworth, in which the prayers are called
'XV orationes sancte Brigitte'.

This MS 16.G.5 is a Book of Hours of the use of
York, which belonged to someone connected with the parish of All
Saints Pavement, York; and several of the early texts of the XV
O's prove to have links with Yorkshire. From a study of
the calendar, litany and memorials of saints in Aberdeen 25 it
can be deduced that it was executed for someone living in the
vicinity of Selby. Of about the same date as Aberdeen 25, and
also produced in Flanders for an English client, is the badly
mutilated Bodleian MS Lat. liturg.f.9 The XV O's
(unfortunately beginning imperfectly) are to be found in a
supplement executed for the first owner, a woman called
Katherine. Among the other prayers in the supplement are a
memorial of St Birgitta (with an antiphon beginning 'O brigida
swecie beata principessa') and one of St John Bridlington, the
prior of an Augustinian house in Yorkshire, who had been
canonized in 1401.

Wilmart spotted this Yorkshire connection, and
suggested that the XV O's were in fact composed by an
anchoress living in that area. But why, then, should the prayers
be ascribed to St Birgitta, rather than some local mystic such
as Richard Rolle? Yorkshiremen early showed an interest in
Brigittine spirituality. One of the earliest defenses of St
Birgitta's Revelationes was written by Geoffrey, abbot
of the Cistercian monastery of Byland in the North Riding of
Yorkshire, circa 1397-1400.

Active lay interest in the Brigittine order in
England dates from 1406, when Philippa, the daughter of Henry
IV, married Eric XIII. She was accompanied to Sweden by a
Yorkshireman, Sir Henry FitzHugh, Lord FitzHugh, whose family
seat was Ravensworth in Richmondshire. He visited Vadstena,
where he announced that he had undertaken to found a Brigittine
house at Cherry Hinton, near Cambridge. This plan proved
abortive, as did that of Henry IV, who was caught up in the
initial enthusiasm, to convert the decayed hospital of St
Nicholas at York into a Brigittine house. But they laid the
ground for Henry V's foundation of Syon Abbey in 1415. To assist
Lord FitzHugh in his plans two Brigittine monks, John Peterson
and Katillus Thorberni, came over to England in 1408, where they
remained until the foundation of Syon. Where they lived while
recruiting postulants for the new order is something of a
mystery. Perhaps they resided at Ravensworth, where they would
have been in an ideal position to introduce the devotion of the
XV O's to Yorkshire.

There is another interesting group of early
English examples of the XV O's. They occur in Bodleian
MS Lat. liturg. g.8, a prayer book written at either St Albans
Abbey or its northern cell of Tynemouth in the 1440s or 1450s,
and, together with a St Albans litany, were added to Bodleian MS
Gough Liturg. 18 in the mid 15th century. This suggests that
they had become a standard part of the devotional life of St
Albans Abbey. This interest is understandable in view of the
important part which the Benedictines of St Albans played in the
foundation of Syon Abbey. Two St Albans monks helped draw up the
Additiones to the Brigittine Rule of St Saviour for the
local use of Syon. The first regularly appointed
confessor-general at Syon was Thomas Fishbourne, a former
steward to the abbot of St Albans who had become a hermit.
Fishbourne also provides another link to the north of England.
Thomas Gascoigne records that 'before his entry into religion he
was a great squire, and a devout, in the north of England'. Not
far from St Albans is Markyate, from where came Joan North, the
first Abbess of Syon.

Thus there is a
good degree of circumstantial evidence to support the
Brigittine origin of the XV O's. This is not to say
that they were composed by St Birgitta herself. The phrase 'orationes
sancte Brigitte' does not necessarily have that implication.
Perhaps the circumstances of their origin are most truly
reflected in the rubric to the 1576 translation: 'Fifteene Prayers righte
good and vertuous, vsually called the .XV.Oos, and of
diuers called S. Brigets prayers, because the holye and
blessed Virgin vsed dayly to say them before the Image of
the Crucifix, in S. Paules Church in Rome'.